Finding Jasper

Lynne Leonhardt

It is 1956, and twelve-year old Gin has arrived at the family farm, ‘Grasswood’, in the South West of Western Australia. She has been left in the care of her lively, idiosyncratic aunt, Attie, while her mother, an English war bride, returns home for a holiday. Gin is the youngest of three generations of very different women, whose lives are profoundly affected by the absence of Jasper: son, brother, husband, father. A fixed point in all their lives is the landscape, layered with beauty and fear, challenge and consolation, isolation and freedom. Beautifully written, Finding Jasper is an acute, sensitive search for love and a sense of self in a rapidly changing world.

Post navigation

About the Book

It is 1956, and twelve-year old Gin has arrived at the family farm, 'Grasswood', in the South West of Western Australia. She has been left in the care of her lively, idiosyncratic aunt, Attie, while her mother, an English war bride, returns home for a holiday. Gin is the youngest of three generations of very different women, whose lives are profoundly affected by the absence of Jasper: son, brother, husband, father. A fixed point in all their lives is the landscape, layered with beauty and fear, challenge and consolation, isolation and freedom. Beautifully written, Finding Jasper is an acute, sensitive search for love and a sense of self in a rapidly changing world.

“Lynne Leonhardt’s luminous debut novel evokes a bygone Western Australia with the hard clarity and emotional deftness of Tim Winton, while weaving together themes of childhood, family, love and loss as bittersweetly as central character Gin’s beloved Schumann did in his
piano music.”

— William Yeoman

“Finding Jasper offers the reader a wonderful experience of the fine grain of a time that has passed: the tensions and passions of lives which have had their direction changed by war and the loss or restitution of love.”

— Brenda Walker

Authors

Lynne Leonhardt was born in Donnybrook in the South West of Western Australia. As a young adult, she worked overseas, travelling extensively during an extended six-year period. She later spent four years in the Riverina District of New South Wales. The author studied music and English literature at University of Western Australia while bringing up four children. She went on to do a PhD in Writing at Edith Cowan University. Her thesis earned her the Dean’s prize in 2008. For many years Lynne has lived in the Perth suburb of Claremont but enjoys retreating to the natural beauty of the South West with her husband whenever she can.